Millicent Simmonds
- ) in Utah, US |residence = Bountiful, Utah |occupation = Actress |years_active = 2017-present |portrays = Rose Kincaid |spouse(s) = |partner(s) = |children = }} Millicent "Millie" Simmonds (born 2002/2003) is a deaf American actress who starred in the 2017 drama film Wonderstruck and the 2018 horror film A Quiet Place. For Wonderstruck, she was nominated for several awards for best youth performance. In television, she appeared in Andi Mack in 2018 and will appear in This Close in 2019. Background Simmonds is a native of the US state of Utah. She lives in Bountiful, Utah. She has four siblings; two older and two younger than her. At twelve months old, Simmonds lost her hearing due to a medication overdose. Her mother learned American Sign Language and taught the family so they could communicate with her. When Simmonds was three years old, she started attending the Jean Massieu School of the Deaf, where she participated in its drama club. After completing sixth grade, she mainstreamed at the Mueller Park Junior High School in the fall of 2015. She has performed at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah, and her sole film experience before Wonderstruck was a deaf student's short, "Color the World". Simmonds has a cochlear implant. With it, she listens to Father John Misty and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Her favorite film to date is The Truman Show (1998). Career Simmonds, who read the deaf-themed juvenile novel Wonderstruck when it was published in 2011, received news of open casting for the film adaptation (released in 2017) from her former drama teacher and auditioned for a role in the film. She competed with over 250 others. When she won the role, she moved to New York City with her mother and her younger siblings to film Wonderstruck. She used American Sign Language interpreters to communicate on set and also received a tutor to continue schoolwork while filming. Vanity Fair's Charles Bramesco said of her casting, "A Utah native without any major film credits to her name, young Simmonds is expected to make quite a splash both as a new face in the industry as well as an icon for deaf and otherwise sensory-disabled actors." When Wonderstruck premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, the Associated Press's Jake Coyle said Simmonds's screen debut was "hailed as a breakthrough". Simmonds was subsequently nominated for several awards for best youth performance (see accolades). The Associated Press also recognized Simmonds as one of eight actors who were Breakthrough Entertainers of 2017. KSL.com's Liesl Nielsen reported in May 2017, "Millie plans to continue both acting and advocating for the deaf community." In 2018, she starred in the horror film A Quiet Place as the deaf daughter of a hearing couple, played by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. While the producers did not specifically plan to cast a deaf actress to play the deaf daughter, Krasinski, who was also the director, pushed to have a deaf actress. Simmonds and her family answered Krasinski's questions for writing about a family with a deaf child. The filmmakers hired an ASL interpreter for Simmonds, so that spoken and signed language could be interpreted back and forth on set. Simmonds helped teach her fellow actors to sign. In 2018, Simmonds appeared in a two-episode arc in the third season of the Disney Channel television series Andi Mack. She first appeared as an extra in the first season, and the series creators invited her back for a recurring role. For her arc, Simmonds taught the other actors how to use ASL, and the showrunners decided to show her scenes involving ASL without providing subtitles so viewers could focus on figuring out the sign language. Filmography Film Television Accolades External Links *IMDB *Instagram Category:Wonderstruck Category:Wonderstruck Actors Category:Actors